Page 5 of The Innocent Carrying His Legacy

Still, she couldn’t back down. Not when the child inside her depended on her. And if she could stare down a bunch of sullen teenage boys who’d been caught shoplifting, then she could certainly hold out against one infamous desert warlord.

Sullen teenage boys aren’t likely to kill you.

That was very true. Though it was too late now.

The man’s cold, flat stare didn’t shift from her, not once. And he didn’t blink. She couldn’t read him at all.

Then he inclined his head minutely and the guard on his left abruptly rattled off in heavily accented English. ‘You are speaking with the Commander, Sheikh Nazir Al Rasul.’

‘That’s your proof?’ Ivy couldn’t help saying. ‘One of your guards who is clearly terrified of you?’

‘That is all the proof you will be getting,’ Al Rasul said. ‘I am not accustomed to repeating myself, but in this case you’re obviously having difficulty understanding me.’ His gaze became sharper, more intensely focused, and Ivy’s breath froze as the expressionless mask dropped and she caught a glimpse of what it had been hiding.

Death. Chaos. Violence. Danger.

This man was a killer.

‘You will tell me your purpose here,’ he went on expressionlessly. ‘Or I’ll have you thrown out before the gates and you can find your own way back to the city.’

It was a death sentence and they both knew it.

This time it was harder to force down her fear and when she reflexively smoothed her robe over her stomach, her hands shook. ‘Very well,’ she said with as much calm as she could muster. ‘But as I said, it’s a private matter.’

‘You need not concern yourself with my guards.’

Good. She needed to get this over with and the sooner the better.

Ivy took a breath, steeled herself, then met his ferocious gaze. ‘I’m pregnant. And I’m here to inform you that the child is yours.’

CHAPTER TWO

ANICYBOLTof shock flickered through Nazir. Then his logic took over.

She was lying, for what reason he couldn’t possibly imagine, but she was. When he indulged himself with a woman, he was always scrupulous with protection. Children would never be in his future. He didn’t want them. He’d been brought up to be a soldier and that was his life, and the domesticity of a wife and children had no place in that life.

Apart from anything else, he remembered every woman he slept with and he definitely hadnotslept with the one sitting on the camp bed in front of him, with her hands in her lap and absolutely no fear at all in her clear, copper-coloured eyes.

He would have laughed if he remembered how.

‘Leave us,’ he ordered calmly to the two guards, virtually quivering in their eagerness to be out of the guardhouse. There was no need for them to waste precious time listening to this woman’s nonsense.

They exited the building like racehorses leaping out of the starting gate.

The woman—Ivy Dean—didn’t move a muscle and she didn’t look away.

No, she wasn’t someone he’d ever take to bed. She was small, with a delicacy to her that would make the rough sex he particularly enjoyed unworkable. He preferred warrior women. Women he didn’t have to worry about accidentally hurting, who could hold their own in bed and out of it.

Yet, he couldn’t deny that there had been something almost...intriguing about her refusal to obey him. Or the way that little pointed chin of hers had lifted in stubborn protest at his orders.

Sadly, though, no matter how stubborn she was, he was in command here and even though she wasn’t a physical threat to him, she might be a threat in other ways. He had many enemies—including whole countries—and someone might be using her to get to him. It was a novel approach, but nothing could be dismissed and this—she—was deeply suspicious.

Which meant he had to find out the real reason she was here come hell or high water.

‘You’re lying,’ he said expressionlessly.

‘I’m not,’ she shot back.

‘Prove it.’ He didn’t consciously imitate her; he didn’t need to.

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